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Golden Eagle defense aims to clean up mistakes that cost them against North Texas

The Southern Miss defense is looking at the stats on the box score from last week’s game as an anomaly, not the standard.

The Golden Eagles (2-3, 1-1 C-USA) played well enough in their first four games – allowing fewer than 355 yards in each game – that giving up 450 yards and 30 points to a good North Texas team is not the end of the world.

Especially when so many of USM’s wounds were self-inflicted.

For the first 41 minutes of the game, the Golden Eagle defense made three big mistakes in 48 plays. The first came when North Texas quarterback Mason Fine connected with Kelvin Smith for a 10-yard pass play from the North Texas one.

Jacques Turner almost reached Fine in the back of the end zone, but Fine dumped it out to Smith on the outside. Jeremy Sangster, Picasso Nelson Jr. and Ty Williams all descended on him quickly, but Smith shook Nelson and dragged Sangster across the 11-yard line for the conversion.

The second big play came later in that drive, when Fine took advantage of busted coverage for a 53-yard touchdown pass from Fine to Jalen Guyton. As Billings pointed out, you can't make that kind of mistake against a good quarterback.

There was a miscommunication on who was supposed to handle Guyton, who was lined up at the slot to the open side of the field. Fine extended the play by rolling out to his right and, keeping his eyes downfield, saw his man nearly 7 yards behind Hemby, the deepest Southern Miss defender.

“We played well until the end of the third quarter,” Billings said. “We gave up the big play on the one pass early… we had a bust in the secondary. He was the only one open and Fine found him.”

The third mistake on defense came early in the second quarter on the very next drive. North Texas was facing a 2nd-and-18 at their own 25-yard line following a holding call, and Fine found Guyton again on a comeback route on the short side of the field.

Guyton ran a great route, used his athleticism to get separation, made the catch and turned to the sideline. Williams was the corner in coverage and just couldn’t bring Guyton down before he slipped away and cut up the sideline to pick up an extra 19 yards and the first down.

This one hurt because North Texas proceeded to kick a field goal at the end of that drive and take the lead they never gave back. Southern Miss had other chances to stop the drive, but forcing a punt that deep in North Texas territory could have also led to good starting field position.

“I was really disappointed (a couple of times),” Billings said. “We had them stopped twice on third downs and missed tackles cost us there, both times. I think we’re getting better in the secondary, we just made a couple of key mistakes that cost us the football game.”

North Texas did go on to score three more rushing touchdowns, but those early mistakes greatly diminished the defense's margin for error later in the game.

Southern Miss would like to get that turned around this weekend against Conference USA West foe UT-San Antonio. The Roadrunners (3-4, 2-1 C-USA) struggled mightily against the Louisiana Tech defense in a 31-3 loss last weekend. UTSA gained just 286 yards, despite running 75 offensive plays (the most it had run through six games). The Roadrunners have averaged just 247 yards in their three Conference USA games against UTEP, Rice and Louisiana Tech.

“They do a lot of different things,” Billings said. “They are very multiple with multiple personnel. They’ve got an athletic quarterback, so that’s something we’ve got to focus on. We’ve got to stop the run with the quarterback, because he can run the ball and that adds another dimension we’ll need to stop.”